Burial caskets are traditionally provided with hardware mounted peripherally around the shell of the casket for lifting and handling the casket. One form of casket hardware includes an arm with an elongated lifting handle bar attached to one end of the arm, with the other end of the arm being pivoted to a clevis with a rivet. The clevis has a bolt attached to it which passes through a hole in a decorative plate, known as an "ear" or "escutcheon" and through a hole in the casket shell wall. A nut secures the bolt and hence arm and escutcheon plate to the shell wall. The escutcheon plate includes a recess or socket for receiving the clevis and the arm generally includes an upper end which extends over the clevis. Thus once installed the casket hardware presents a decorative escutcheon plate from which depends a decorative arm which in turn supports the handle bar; the combination of arm and escutcheon recess hide from view the utilitarian mechanics of attaching the arm and escutcheon to the casket shell. Such casket hardware is disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,204,286 and 4,615,085, both assigned to the assignee of the present invention.
At least two shortcomings of this type of casket hardware reside in the number and size of the piece parts required to construct the hardware assembly. The hardware assembly requires several separate piece parts which are each individually manufactured resulting in greater manufacturing costs. A number of the parts are rather small in size thus making the assembly of the hardware a tedious job. It is therefore desirable to provide casket hardware which reduces the number of individual piece parts and in particular the number of small piece parts in order that the hardware can be more economically manufactured and assembled. Any such casket hardware must however continue to hide or conceal from normal view the utilitarian mechanical aspects of the attachment of the escutcheon and arm to the casket shell.
Another form of casket hardware includes a mounting plate secured to the casket shell wall. The plate includes a pair of lateral ears. The ears includes apertures for accepting pins or trunnions on the ends of elongated handle bars. A handle bar spans between the facing ears of adjacent mounting plates and the handle bar pins fit in those ears. A separate decorative plate or cover is secured over each mounting plate to conceal the attachment of the handle bar to the ear and of the mounting plate to the casket shell wall. Such casket hardware is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,657,764 also assigned to the assignee of the present invention.
The shortcoming of this form of hardware resides in the requirement that a separate, decorative plate or cover be installed over the mounting plate in order to conceal the various attachments mentioned above.
It is therefore an objective of the present invention to provide casket hardware which reduces the total number of piece parts, which reduces the number of small piece parts, and which conceals the structural attachment of the hardware to the casket.